End of War: The Rainforest Wars
by RiptideZ
Summary: In the 2100s, there was a war that was unparalleled by everything that had come before it. It broke the very system that ran the modern world. It lead to the end of the modern age and the signed the death note of Nations. The Interplanetary War was the birthright of the UNSC, and along the way, Captain Jeremiah Mendez documented the war from his eyes.
1. The War to End all Wars

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_Welcome to RiptideZ's "End of War: The Rainforest Wars," a non-profit fan-produced fiction product under the ownership of set penname: RiptideZ._

_DISCLAIMER:_

_All copyrighted items mentioned or used in this work belongs to their rightful owners at 343 Industries, Microsoft, and other brands mentioned below or later under terms of Fair Use. The author only owns their own creations. This author is an adamant supporter of Constructive Criticism, please read and review, be mindful however, this author will delete your comment if it is considered of ill-intent or overstated such as being already stated more than a few times. If anything is wrong with the writing piece, contact RiptideZ through the reviews section, or Instant Messaging."_

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"**To those who have been down range, to them, and those like us. Damn Few…"**

**For my brother-in-arms and too those who experienced hell on Earth in War.**

**...**

I was in an Italian café on Earth in 2184 and I remember this meal unlike any other, it's my most vivid memory. I was sitting below a green and white full umbrella eating a full meal alone. Adjourning the table was a round of Italian delicacies. More half of the appeasing platters were unknown to me yet here I was stuffing my face without a second thought.

Today was the 14th anniversary of the Rainforest War or the Amazon Campaign that occurred during the Interplanetary War, the war that redefined war and the idea of Nations and Patriots. I was enjoying my dinner, across from me, a small makeshift altar complete with a scrapbook of faces familiar to my eyes and candles with a sentimental odor. The dinner remained mostly quiet except for the other silent patrons around me in the courtyard yet the sound of seagulls of Venice echoing overhead kept me from falling into an endless trance.

I ate my food and stared off into space with a self-imposed silence. I had guessed based on the quietness of the other patrons, they were willing to be quieter for my sake, this restraint was a regular location I visited every year following the end of the war and yet only recently in the last few years had I noticed a tomb-like silence whenever I visited this café, somewhere in the back of my mind I assumed the owners of the particular joint were patient and remorseful enough to protect my integrity. Instead of kicking me out for disturbing the peace, they brought me the care that was found in the libraries that my father would go to where the management would silence anyone that talked and the dust and knowledge that grasped through the air and made the room fill me up with wonders of fiction and words of thousands of souls all at once.

They gave me peace, I gave them my honorable commitment as a regular eater at the place and brought customers every year when people grew curious on the street of the burly-beaten man with a whisky, white beard beyond his age. I was an abnormality in a sea of normal and yet everyone nodded and understood my precedent position, I was a veteran of the greatest kind because in times of war, there is no better man than the one willing to put his life on the line for those he will never know.

However, this dinner was not like the others that I had help so many times in the past. This day and this memory was interrupted by the strong, learning and curious child that gave me the incentive to write about my war that took the lives of my friends, brothers-in-arms, family, and lover. The war that scarred me in more places than one.

He was like any other boy, a young man of the age of 8 or 9, just the ripe age to start understanding and questioning the world, he was so innocent, so unbroken, that I wished to allow him the blissful ignorant to remember a far-off dream when at time there was no war. He likely was born after the war, a generation of new dreams and hopes and he would be at the center fighting not for a blood-soaked husk but a member of the greatest generation to grace the earth that which every man has ever walked upon.

He was dressed in a white T-shirt, one of those ingenious ideas from before my time that continued to be considered a likable fashion for its simplicity. His cargo shorts were bright brown in the glowering sun and his face showing an unparalleled thirst for knowledge about the strange pictures that had been messily stuck together within in the cheap old bound book that sat across from dead-quiet old me.

"What's that for?" He asked me.

I said nothing.

"Hey I asked you something, Mr. What's that weird book for?" He asked again this time less polite.

Behind him I could hear his parents motioning for him to come back to their table and stop bother the old man that clearly seen more than he let on.

The boy pouted and continued to stand firmly next to me with a firm finger directed at the faces and combat images of the war.

"…It's a memory, from long ago. A time that you would not remember and probably never relate to." I stated firmly.

"Nu-uh! I can understand anything! I'm all grown up, I'm a man!" He said firmly with a slight grin on his innocent, tough little face.

I simply looked at him dead in the eyes with a look that would have scared off even the experienced thug, a look that showed the men that I had killed in the goal of protecting other's Humanity.

The boy however did not falter, if he had any doubts at that second, I could not tell, I forgot how intelligent and wise a child could be, their minds full of ideas and ways of thinking I had lost many years beyond my prime.

"They were friends I lost to a great burning, they're faraway now. Somewhere I will never be able to reach until I have completed my time."

"You were in the war?" He asked innocently.

"Yes, son, how about I ask you, and how much do you know about the War?" I asked copying his innocent smile.

"I know a lot, my dad tells me all about it!"

"And how much does he know?" I asked in all seriousness as I eyed the man likely to be his father who fidgeted uncomfortably under my noticeable stare.

"A lot too, his dad told him and he tells me." The boy said.

His grandfather had been in the war. That was an interesting fact.

"He's a special man though." He said.

"Why's that?" I asked now interested.

"He had two arms but he can't walk, he has no legs and yet he smiles and grins like any other man. He doesn't care if he lost his legs because he got new ones that make him stronger than anyone. His new legs are wheels, he moves faster than me and I'm the faster kid in my school!"

"Interesting, I'd like to meet your grandfather sometime." I said humoring the child, I meet many veterans after the war, and I will admit I was lucky to escape the war mostly unhurt.

"Hey, Mr. what do you think about people, if you went to war, doesn't that make you hate the people you had to fight?" He asked quickly moving with his train of thought.

"No, I don't hate them because they fought for what they believed in and I did the same. We were all equals and all deserve to be treated as such, there were no good guys or bad guys, everyone had their moment in the Great War.

"Then you like all people? Even the ones who are called evil." He asked.

"I won't say I like them, but they are all humans and will be treated as if they were people through and through."

"Well if there will always be good guys and bad guys, how will there not be another war." He asked.

"Because… I said, there won't be another war… because they have you to lead them." I said nodding in confirmation. The new generation would be better than mine, I was sure of it.

From there I started to look at the trend of war and I noticed something, if the Castillo Treaty of 2170 holds as Humanity will be united under one banner. Isn't the Interplanetary War the final war?

As Woodrow Wilson said about World War 1, "This is a war to end all wars."

Many people said President Wilson was a joker and that he was completely wrong, but now that I thought about it, maybe he was on to something when said that. Nearly 4 centuries ago.

In World War 1, the United States President told the American people a promise to end the war quickly and claimed that this would be the end of war in general. He stated it was the war to end all wars. Following World War 1, President Wilson had his subordinates draft a plan for world peace between nations. However only 3 decades later, World War 2 proved that Humanity still had some fight in her.

However, instead of looking at the First World War as a war that was to be the last war, would it possibly be correct in a different fashion?

The First World War was simply the first step toward peace, it was the first war that brought the idea of a peaceful Earth. It gave us the first united coalition of nations, the League of Nations, an international group that worked to unite nations and borders.

However, war broke out again with the Second World War, following the war, the United Nations, US President Roosevelt initiated plans for a successor group to represent world peace. The United Nations, even if Roosevelt did not live long enough to see his brainchild become reality, the UN would prove to be better than its predecessor in every way. It united the Earth for over a century of history. World War 2 also gave Humanity's its first super weapon, the Atom Bomb.

The Cold War era became the final major war between two major superpowers, nations with unparalleled power among its neighbors and gave the world a reason to remain peaceful in the form of MAD, the acronym for Mutually-Assured-Destruction, the possibly of nuclear fallout that would leave the Earth inhabitable and the Human race extinct even before it could think about truly reaching for the stars.

The Globalization era lead by the world's last superpower, the United States, ironically the one country responsible for the steps toward escalated war and lasting peace through nuclear weapons and the United Nation respectively. In this era, there were no more major wars and instead was punctuated by minor wars between regional powers and their weaker neighbors and the United States military acting as an international policing force to maintain the peace. While this time period looked like the waning days of the United States as the last superpower and the coming of another major war, it turned out to be the end of an isolationist world and the beginning of the Coalition/Federation movement, a process of weaker states coming together to form a loose union punctuated by the European Union in Europe. Nations quickly became super nations and the rapid investment in space began to redefine what it meant to be a patriot or a citizen of a country.

Finally the Interplanetary War bringing age-old ideologies against the established order of democracy, republics, globalization, and lasting peace. Fascists and Communists came out of the woodwork and started what could be considered the third world war yet it spanned more than just the Earth. It encompassed the entire solar system, the Wars end would sign the death note to the Nation-State period of human history and the United Nations would become the Human government and forming the last faction of Humanity, the final step toward Human unity.

If the First World War was not the "War to end all Wars," then I think it is right to say that the Interplanetary War ending with the Castillo Treaty that has led to peace. The Interplanetary War shall be the "War to end all Wars." We are now one people spanned across a sea of stars, and I'm proud to call myself a member of the Human race and live to see this day come of fruition.

I am a man of war and this is my tale…

**A Soldier's Tale: The Rainforest Wars**

**As told by Captain Jeremiah Mendez**

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	2. Rising Action

**Hey guys, I finally got around to updating. I've revamped the entire storyline. I hope its more realistic and I filled most of the time gaps. If I failed at anything, make me aware. Though its unlikely I'll go back to correct them, I worked a little too hard to have to mess up again. Thanks for reading and remember to read and review, next chapter instead will be called Frankenstein****.**

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**Chapter 1: Rising Action**

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Wars don't occur from a random set of occurrences, the pressure of organized violence is always there boiling below the surface of mankind's face. Once enough pressure builds up, similar to a pimple but more synonymous with a volcano, it erupts and it doesn't stop until the pressure and the material held back for years is all but gone.

While pressure for war will wait for years, the time it took for my war, the Interplanetary War and the Rainforest Wars; that was a waiting period that spanned beyond my years taking nearly two centuries to create such a conflict, and when it ranged out it shook the world to its core and mankind was never the same again.

It began nearly two centuries ago right after the Cold War; looking back on the idea of the Cold War, many of the people of this generation see it as little more than a joke.

I remember reading some of those old paperback books that made up the majority of material in my grandparents' time. The old papers would describe the Cold War as one of the most pressing times for mankind. Threats of a nuclear apocalypse, the receding presence of the British Empire as a world power on a global stage. The idealism clashes between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres and the differences of Capitalism and Communism. In the end however, the United States of America and her Capitalist allies won over their competition, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact Nations. Not once did a nuke go off during this time period against any nation or populace in a directed and clear declaration of war. Heck, in our history as it remained up till the 2150s, no nukes had ever required usage since the end of the Second World War when the United States used these mega weapons to cripple the most powerful maritime empire in recent history.

It seems strange that our ancestors assumed that after the Cold War was even a true danger, the statistics of human violence had been receding drastically since the rediscovery of the Western Hemisphere by the Europeans and even before that. Before the Interplanetary War, the measure of human violence had almost been nonexistent when compared to the history of violence that we grew up with as a young species.

Following the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Russian Soviet Union, the United States of America became the single, most recognized Superpower of the Earth and many thought it would have no equal for years to come. The term Superpower too many failed to justice to the United States' status.

However, this belief that America was invincible for the foreseeable future was shattered on September 11, 2001. On this day, America experienced the third invasion on its sovereign territory by an outside force. The first were the British after the American Rebellion and the ensuing War of 1812. The next were the Japanese during the Second World War upon the U.S naval base of Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii. The third was by the newest and strangest threat that the world would come to know as Terrorism.

On September Eleventh, Islamic Extremists from over a dozen different nations in the Middle East entered the United States unnoticed and hijacked several large commercial airliners in flight over the American Northwest. Two of these aircraft crashed into the American Stock Exchange of New York City, the Twin Towers. Another crashed into the American Intelligence Headquarters known as the Pentagon. Another plane crashed in a rural field after the riders fought back against the madmen, there were no survivors on the hijacked aircraft and the crashes and suicide bombings tallied up to nearly 3000 casualties at the hands of a small group of well-informed and smart devotees of an extremist view of the very popular Islamic religion.

In the days that followed the American populace became riled up for war, across the world many people around the world celebrated not in the name of religious zeal but for the reminder that America was not invincible, that the world's most wealthy and powerful nation had weaknesses and many of these people had for years feared the possibility of a cultural takeover by the "intoxicating" plebian culture of the American persona.

The United States and her NATO and international allies rallied toward Southwest Asia, known to some as the Middle East, where the Iraqi Taliban government had sheltered and nurtured the people responsible for the attack on the American homeland, Al-Qaeda, Arabic for "The Base." The American first response units deployed to the nation of Iraq were quick to crush any opposition by the Taliban regime, with an army feared for it's sized, the fourth largest in the world at its time.

One of the few reminders in the 21st century of the stark gaps between the United States and those comparable. The United States may have only the second largest military force at the time and for the number of wars it had faced, it may not have had the most positive record. Instead they made up for this with having the most advanced technology, the largest check, and the most determined spirits of any armed force on the planet after their homeland was attacked. They turned the world's fourth largest military, a force of over 45,000, into dust in a matter of 72 hours. In 3 days, it took some several thousand men from a nation half-way across the world to crush the most feared threat to the other Middle Eastern nations had seen since the creation of the Western-backed Jewish state of Israel which defeated an invading coalition of neighboring Muslim nations in 6 days, hence the name, the 6 Days War. This was a reminder to the world that America was not invincible but it had a very sharp sword that could easily be turned on any advisory across the planet and cut through the enemy in days.

This novel however, is not a reminder of the adventures of a warmongering, hypocritical nation with a heart of gold; this is not a book to revel in the victories by the nations of old. This is not a book of legends to tell the young to tell their friends that their parent's parents had killed their friends' ancestors in cold blood.

This chapter is a stark realization of how an ancient legacy that drifted through the ages and the beliefs that it brought along that would not die. The violent and aggressive behavior of the United States following the Cold War to any foe that dared to bear its tongue at the world's most powerful nation and its allies; these actions are what have caused the events that led up to the Rainforest Wars and the Interplanetary War.

The Roman Empire was very much comparable to that of the hypothetical American Cultural Empire. The Roman Legacy that followed the collapse of Rome at the hands of the people of Germany, at that time referred to as barbarians or Vikings. The next great empire was the Byzantines who fell to the people of the Ottoman Empire during the Crusades, from there the next great empire became several empires. The Russians, the Chinese, the Italians, and the Portuguese. Following them, came that of the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, and the British. The time of empires over the world was the historic definition for Superpower. However, the American Revolution while not very important in history, led to the French Revolution and bore the French Republic that gave the needed winds for the call of Freedom of Monarchy for the world to force empires to their knees. First the Ottomans, then the Italians and Portuguese, then the Spanish, then the Chinese and the Russians. Finally the fall of the British and French after World War Two gave birth to a new type of power, a nation without need of subjects far and wide. The modern Superpower, the United States and the Soviet Union. With the fall of the Soviet Union, there came a time where the United States was the only child of the Roman Legacy left on this Earth and many assumed that its decline spelled doom for that of modern society.

Even with the defeat of the Taliban by conventional means the United States failed to realize the same mistake the British made against the very Americans during their own independence movement. Insurgency in the modern age was the awaiting death note to any invasion as seen in the events of the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the events of the Iraqi War, the Afghan War, and the further conflicts by the United States into sovereign territory set by empires long since died away, lines carved by fools of a long dead age. The British Empire that was responsible for the early events of the 21st century and late 20th century with prime example given to Africa and the Middle East. The Americans continued the legacy of nation-devolving that had been held by its predecessor, the British.

Following the killing of the world-renown Islamic extremist and leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, in the 2000s, just years following the attack on 9/11. The West had been at war against Terror Groups all over the Middle East since the 1980s, by 2010, many had switched from having faith in the war too calling for an end even before anything good and long-lasting could be established. The Western governments complied and the Middle East was left to fend for themselves and pick up the pieces. And people seemed to wonder why the Terrorist kept coming back if the Western powers decided to come to your country to play ball and leave it in a worse state than it had been at the beginning of the series of wars.

In 2014, the first time since the nationalization of the Suez Canal by the Nasser-led Egypt, a group had instilled fear into the world again at the possibility of a group that could create a regional power in the Middle East that rivaled that of the historic Persian and Ottoman Empires and established the fabled caliphate of modern times. This group originally referred to itself as ISIS or ISIL for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/Levant. Due to the lack of support for continues intervention by the older generations in the Western nations, any goals to exterminate the newest threat of a dangerous Wahhabism-styled group since Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, continued war plans were left shelved. Other major conflicts and events were mostly ignored in the surprising wake of ISIS's undeterred expansion that continued through the 2010s; even scary prospects like the Russian-Ukraine War, the West African Ebola Outbreak, the start of the Chinese development of their first large manned satellite and continued space ambitions, the Hamas-Israeli War, and the full blown Mexican Civil War between the weakening government and the Cartels that occurred around the same time as the coming wars with ISIS against the West.

The ISIS threat grew until finally almost all of Iraq and Syria was under the control of the Islamic State, now the plot of land had been set and a Caliphate was proclaimed under a mostly unknown man who had claimed to be a descendent of the line of the Prophet Muhammad. Ironically, the very same man had served in an American detention center for suspected terrorism years over. Now he was back. I'm sure many Americans were regretting not killing the man now that he had got his chance for revenge.

In 2016, against the wishes of many of the older generation the new majority of younger people in North America and Europe had been calling for war. A more war-like people calling for justice for the countless of lives lost at the hands of this fledgling empire. The next steps in the Islamic State's plan as of the 2010s: Take Israel and raze everything Christian and Jewish in the city and nation to the ground. The sacking of Egypt, the Kurds of Northern Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and the former central of the Ottoman Caliphate, the nation of Turkey.

On Christmas, 2017, the Islamic State hosted an attack on the Vatican City in Italy to set an example for anyone who would not bow to the rules of the Caliphate's own twist on the belief of Sharia Law. The current Pope was evacuated with most of the people in the centerpiece of Christianity and parts of Rome, the historical home of everything that made the West the West. Culture, Knowledge, Beliefs, Military, Patriotism, Spirit, everything that the West had held dear burned and the home of Christianity and the libraries of the Vatican was razed to the ground and turning the Christians of the world into a population calling for the burning of the Caliphate.

The events of the Vatican City Burning has become one of the most powerful uniting cry since the Berlin Wall collapse in 1991 for Europe. A new violent foreign policy allowed for the NATO coalition to turn their weapons once against the Middle East for the hundredth or so time since the 1950s. The War with the Islamic State was not like anything that had occurred before against the Western-found coalition. An anonymous military analyst from the United States in 2014 even called the Islamic State "no longer applicable to the modern definition of a terrorist group." They were a militia movement, an army without a nation to call home. At least not until 2018. Many referred to the state as an Emirate, but names and words lacked anything in the natural process of war. They were a threat that needed to be put down and a united coalition led by the United States; everyone was ignorant and foolish to assume that this war would be just like the many wars that had occurred before. Staging from Israel and moving north the coalition planned to crush the Caliphate slowly and then the Iraqi and Syrian people would be free. However, the Islamic State had set its eyes on Israel and compared to the West Bank's Hamas, the fighting in Israel and Palestine looked like a catfight in comparison to what the Islamic State had in mind for the rest of the Middle East, Europe, and the rest of the "Islamic World."

The NATO-ISIS War started in 2018 and continued through 2032. This time there was no pulling out. The Islamic State had proven itself this time a clear threat to the people of all the Eastern and Western Hemisphere, the first Islamic Emirate to develop the ability to challenge the West. This would not be the first nation to do so in the years that followed. Hundreds of Thousands of people in the Middle East died during the war and many military analysts predicted an increase in polarization among the Middle Eastern demographic between pro-Western and pro-Wahhabism ideals in the years to come.

In the meantime, the Islamic State proved to be the first terrorist threat in the world to gain the ability to produce potential nuclear weapons. Luckily for the world, these weapons were never deployed but the threat of nuclear weapons being out of state hands had finally been fully realized.

British Intelligence in 2025 back to Iran but the West was still bogged down with the war with ISIS to be able to strike at Iran. During the 14 years of war, what became known as the Era of Jihad and forced fear into the hearts of all people of the Earth; the Chinese had finally completed their own space station that rivaled that of the now defunct International Space Station. The Russian Federation had annexed Eastern Ukraine when Europe turned a blind eye to the East and many of the former Soviet-bloc nations were forced or persuaded to reorganize treaties closer to Moscow.

The world was a changing place with many in the world's most prosperous nations appearing stuck in the warmongering spirit that greatly reflected the behavior of early 20th century preceding the years that lead up to World War One. In an effort to keep the peace, the United Nations called for reforms among the military and economic distribution of the world community most reflected by the major reform to the United Nations Security Council in 2034, the wealthiest and most prosperous nations on Earth and the very victors of the Second World War.

From a vote by a jury not including the Permanent Members of the UNSC, the lower ranking-temporary regional representatives nominated legislation that raised another 10 nations to Permanent Member status. Along with the rise in the extended UN Security Council, the previous vetoing power of the members of the Council were revoked in favor of a vote by majority system, one that further enabled the nations of the West and democratic nations over the regional powers of Russia, China, and their respective allies.

These 10 nations represented the next most prosperous peoples on the Earth. Germany, Japan, Brazil, and India were the obvious choices. Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Egypt, Turkey, and Australia were also included. Most of them were obvious or relative allies with the United States, Great Britain, and France; this notion further isolated the former Communist powers into felling isolated from the global community.

China and the United States continued their Space Race as America landed the first successful manned mission to Mars in 2036, China landed its first people on the Moon, and the American space program, NASA used robots to successfully capture an asteroid in 2040.

In the time that followed 2034, the Russians decided to raise gas prices for Europe in an act of defiance and a reminder of Europe's continued dependency of the world's largest nation.

In 2035, the heat between Russia and Europe had become so great in a year of skyrocketing oil prices, the European Union drafted a declaration of war, this time the United States, their biggest backer decided to sit this one out. In 2034, many regions around Russia had either been assimilated or forced into stricter treaties centered on Moscow.

The Russo-European War, or the Slavic War in some circles, encompassed much of the countries and territories that had Russian oil and natural gas pipelines running through them. Russia and several other Baltic States combated a fully militarized European Union.

The war lasted from 2038 to 2041 and occurred with a surprisingly lack of bloodshed; the war was made up of mostly air conflicts, espionage, and destruction of infrastructure. Russia quickly lost the air war due to lacking the number of planes that the EU had over the course of recent history had either bought from the United States or constructed themselves. Russia had spent most of its military budget focused on ground warfare due to the lack of opposing Baltic States with a long-standing air force. This proved fatal in the event of a war with Europe. However, Russia took advantage of the lack of formal borders and interconnected trade routes between European nations to strike home with terror attacks, mercenaries, bombings, and destruction of infrastructure. However, the real deathblow for Europe had already struck before the war began. Without oil and natural gas to fuel their vehicles, military, and economy, Europe was fighting an upscale battle that reflected Napoleon's defeat at the hands of Russia distantly.

In the end, Russia survived the sleeping giant that was Europe who was quickly forced to the negotiating table in which Europe agreed to pay a reduced cost of the higher costs for earthly fuel while Russia agreed to stay away from the European Union's confederacy of states. In the years that followed Europe began to develop closer ties with the Middle East and Africa in a venture to look for alternative sources to quench their reliance on Russia for natural gas. In 2048, a trans-Mediterranean bridge was developed starting from Spain and ended in Morocco and another section from Italy to Tunisia that followed natural gas pipelines from Nigeria and another line running through Egypt to the Middle East. American and Canadian oil sold to Europe experienced a ten-fold in consumer interest as well.

Following a pattern of ignorance toward North Korea by China, the Hermit Kingdom had finally lost its steam, they had finally reached the tipping point by which the ruling family could no longer support his people from within. Requiring more territory and space to feed his dying people, Kim Jong-un was forced into invading other nations. Like a desperate cornered animal, the North Korean military lashed out at the DMZ in the South and at the Chinese-Korean Border to the North. Seoul fell within 3 hours at the hands of the North Korean Army, the South Korean Armed Forces retreated further down the peninsula even with the support of the American Seventh Fleet that was permanently stationed on the South Korean coast.

Following the initial wave, the American Seventh Fleet fell with 60% casualties including the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, CVN-82 USS Thomas Jefferson. The Japanese relief forces of the JMSDF, quickly arrived with reinforcements for the now stalemated South Koreans who with the aid of the US military held off the North Koreans, another US taskforce arrived within another several weeks. China from the north invaded the Korean Peninsula for the attack on their sovereign territory by the desperate North Korean regime.

Similar to the original Korean War, the Second Korean War continued for over the course of years, however after three. The Chinese secured Pyongyang and killed the aging leader.

China and South Korea met at the negotiating table in the October of 2054 where China was promised the upper half of the former North Korean territory and the South would control everything up to an obscure river at the edge of North Korean territory. The seemingly friendly negotiations with China and South Korea with the United States as an mediator gave Japan more reason to be suspicious of China who had been attempting to buy up former enemies throughout the Pacific and Oceania; most of them being from South Asia including Indonesia, Vietnam, and several other smaller nations, even Singapore, one of the world's richest city-states was pulled into the Chinese payroll. Taiwan, also referred to as Chinese Taipei had in recent years become closer to the mainland.

In 2063, Japan and China began a proxy war that enveloped most of the Eastern Hemisphere with battles raging in Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, West China, the Philippines, and the Bering Strait. The war was never fully realized however and the peace remained steady between both rival nations even when relations were tense. The historical term for this war however was simply referred to as the South China Sea Dispute, a time span of over 6 decades between the two neighbors over drilling rights to the area. The name however stems from the Izumo incident nearly 2 decades earlier when a JMSDF taskforce led by the JMSDF Izumo, a Japanese helicopter destroyer that sailed too close to the Chinese mainland and a Chinese anti-ship missile narrowly missed the small aircraft carrier due to advanced warning systems and jamming suites developed in both Japan and the United States for the Japanese Military.

In 2078, what became known as the Second Depression struck the world. Major nations, such as China, the United States, Russia, Britain, and other members of the European Union were left unaffected due to their inevitable switch to self-reliant systems and alternative fuels. The Second Depression occurred after Iran, with a fully armed and dangerous Navy to fully secure and close the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf and forced many of the Global South and many oil-dependent nations were left in terror as worldly oil prices skyrocketed and the Oil Wars began.

From 2078-2112, the Oil Wars, a large assortment of nations simply attacking each other out of spite for drilling rights. Of the world, the Western Hemisphere was the most stable. The United States, the pinnacle and champion of alternative fuel research since the 2020s had adopted an all-encompassing system of fuel that used space-based solar conducting satellites to beam heat back to Earth as microwaves, wave energy caused by tides, nuclear power plants, helium-3 from the Moon, bio-fuels such as algae, and even shale oil: America's long dormant oil fields that rivaled Saudi Arabia's, had made the United States and her allies and like minded nations to transform from oil and other earth-based fuels to other worldly fuels to drive their nations and prosper above the rest of the world. Due to the Monroe Doctrine established in the eighteenth century however, Latin America was not left out in this Fuel Revolution, American domestic policy that started with Immigration Reform had come to the extreme where the United States and Canada would send taskforces into the deep South and either force reform within governments or simply overthrow those deemed corrupt and unjust by the NAFTA successor, the North American Trade Bureau.

Since 2038, America had begun to invest in its own hypothetical backyard, Latin Americans either suffered or gained from the new pushes made by invading "imperialists," as the United States and Canada coalition moved to reform the South American continent. The Brazilian government nearly went to war with the United States in 2057 due to the reformation movement by the United States. Even with the higher state of living that eventually found its way to the South American Continent, Latin American found themselves almost entirely dependent on the United States and Canada for economic support. Much like the nations of Germany and Japan at the end of the World War Two, the Southern nations found themselves on welfare and at the hands of the corrupt heads of American businesses who would likely do more harm than good. It wasn't until 2128, that specific laws were forced upon American industries operating in the South to stop the corporate theft of South America's rich resources.

In 2120, the United States, Canada, and Mexico; the three largest and most stable economies in the Western Hemisphere created a domestic market that surpassed the European Union in every form and style. Adopting the style of the EU however, the NATB became a formal entity, the URNA, the United Republics of North America. The smaller and less fortunate governments of South America were pressured into creating their own union from the URNA that led to the Federation of South American Nations or the FSAN. The FSAN's formation however broke the previous ruling on tampering by North American corporations in the South due to the creations of multiple loopholes and relaxed borders made it easy to establish easy monopolies again forcing the continent into renewed poverty in comparison to its Northern brother, alibi, not as bad as a century earlier.

Corporations in the 22nd century suddenly had powers and influence that rivaled even some of the more powerful and richer nations. By 2145, the demand of private militaries for hire grew beyond imagine. The Earth's most powerful military stat changed from the United States to the Private Military Company, Misriah Military & Logistics Inc. an Egyptian-based defense contractor with backing from Google.

Even Space was not left untouched by the nations of Earth:

2043 – The first Space Elevator is constructed in Tokyo, Japan.

2068 – America begins the establishment of factories on the Moon using a space elevator constructed in Miami, Florida.

2083 – America creates its own Asteroid Farm in orbit of Earth allowing for the first creation of military space ships and cheap civilian craft.

2102 – Chinese, American, and European Space Agencies: a large multi-national cooperative mission that cost trillions of dollars: the colonization of Mars. Includes plans to ram an asteroid into the planet, and speed up the development of an atmosphere.

2135 – The First Humans arrive in orbit of Saturn, the first successful Boon Towns on Mars are established. The UN is put in charge of maintaining the developments and keeping the peace between different establishments.

Africa became a battleground in 2068 and continued throughout history until the end of the Interplanetary War, South America established the new democratic poverty rate at the hands of corrupt URNA politicians and unrestricted corporations. China and Japan signed a formal treaty in peace that would eventually form into the very fragile alliance, the Trade Union of India and the Pacific or TUIP in 2118, the union included China, Korea, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, India, Pakistan, and several other smaller nations; Russia and the US were considered honorary members. The alliance would eventually be dissolved right before the start of the Interplanetary War. Iran absorbed much of its neighbors and left unattended by the Western powers and grew to become a regional power only rivaled by the power of Russia to the north, the TUIP to the East, and the two powers of Israel and Egypt to the West. The European Union would finally include all of Europe except West Russia in 2099, the alliance grew to rival China and the United States' economies. Russia remained mostly alone but was accepted into the EU and TUIP as honorary members allowed to sit at the government meetings but never take part.

As things seemed to stabilize and the unification of nations began to drop the number of nations from a number of over 200 to only about 70 in the course of a century. The South African-led African Union would ultimately be a failure do to the rest of Africa suffering from permanent poverty at the hands of empires in the past and present.

The world was appearing to stabilize and stand still much like it had appeared to following the Second World War, too much of everyone's surprise however, no one expected a war, one that would rival World War Two in scope and would exceed any genocide in the History of Man. The Interplanetary War was about to occur and no one knew it was coming.

Between the appearance of Permanent Poverty for the Global South, and a solidified stand in the Stars for the richest among the world, the future had seemed predictable. The Interplanetary War and by extension, the Rainforest Wars, was nowhere in sight for the rest of the world.

The causes however were boiling below the surface, placed there since the beginning of the Cold War and even before that. While the Two centuries before were nothing peaceful, the world had never seen war much like this, a War that would burn scars into the face of the Earth that would never dear heal, scars that would appear even in space. The Rainforest Wars was at the doorstep of Human History and nobody realized it was coming.

**…**


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